Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 2813510" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 528The archon’s name was Abael, and as she passed over the sleeping village below, she cast out into the darkness, scanning for evil as well as for mundane dangers that might lurk in the darkness.  Her senses were far superior to those of most mortals, but even so, the corruption was nearly upon the place before she detected its presence.  A dark form materialized out of the night before the village’s main gates.  It was massive, easily twenty feet tall, looming over the thick pylons of the repaired barrier.  And yet it was silent, its approach unremaked by telltale noises one would expect from a thing of its size, until it reached down and tore the gates apart with great claws that left ugly black scars upon the fresh wood.  The gates resisted for only a moment, before the heavy board, fully eight inches thick, that held the portals shut splintered explosively, and they swung open loudly on bent hinges traumatized by the rough treatment. Abael was already diving to greet the intruder.  She lifted her trumpet to her lips, summoning a clarion call that shattered the night, offering an answer to the destructive noise of the creature’s arrival.  She followed that with a holy smite that swallowed up the upper half of the creature in flare of pure white light. But when the smite faded, the intruder stepped forward, unharmed.  Lifting its head, it fixed Abael with a cold gaze.  The archon felt a grim chill as she barely overcame the paralyzing grip of a hold monster spell; and then, before she could react, the monster hit her with an unholy blight.  The spell penetrated her resistance easily, and she staggered as she fought off the cloying sickness that tried to creep into her bones through the dark miasma of the blight. Recognizing at last the true nature of her foe, the archon cast a banishment spell.  But the nightwalker was again unaffected, its potent spell resistance enabling it to shed the effects of the celestial magic.  Abael tightened her grop on her silver trumpet, which at her mental command shifted into the form of a greatsword.    Before she could dive to engage the terrible undead monster, a faint whisper of wind alerted her of a new danger.  Looking up, she saw a dark fold of shadow descending rapidly from above, a wave of perfect black that overwhelmed even the dark sky beyond.  Abael lifted her sword in challenge, her aura flaring bright around her celestial form, but the nightwing altered its course to the side, blasting her with a finger of death as it slid past.  This time the archon’s spell resistance held, and the icy chill of the spell was felt merely as a momentary shadow brushing against her life essence.But as the nightwing turned away, three discrete shadows that were only slightly smaller than the huge undead creature detached and swarmed through the night at her.  Their foulness swept over her perceptions in a wave, and a look of anger clouded her face. Dread wraiths!The wraiths dove eagerly toward her, their insubstantial bodies spread wide like a cloak catching the wind.  Abael waited until they were within thirty feet before casting a mass cure serious wounds spell that both tore into their unholy essence and restored some of the injury she’d taken from the nightwalker’s blight.  But there was no time for further action as the powerful undead spirits swarmed around her, trying to suck away her life essence with their cold touch.  Her aura fortified her, allowing her to resist that drain, but even so their incorporeal fingers drew blue lines across her flesh where they touched, spreading tendrils of numbness through her body. Abael knew that the wraiths were too potent for a holy word or her undeath to death spell, and would likewise not be fazed by the call of her trumpet.  So she swept out with her enchanted blade, tearing into the nearest wraith.  The undead creature did not even attempt to dodge the assault, trusting its semi-substantial form to protect it.  But the celestial’s sword cut into it, once, twice, and with a soft sigh the wraith dissolved. But the nightshades were still pressing their assault as well.  First one, and then a second unholy blight erupted around Abael.  She resisted the first, but the second, originating from the more powerful walker, cut again through her defenses and ravaged her pristine soul.  Weakened, she further succumbed to the touch of one of the remaining wraiths, and she felt her essence diminish as the creature greedily fed upon her life force. The nightwing had turned, cutting a broad swath through the night sky, and started gliding back toward the embattled celestial. Light erupted from atop the tower as the heavy door blasted open and the companions, with Arun and his glowing hammer first among them, made their appearance.  They rushed to the edge of the battlement, looking for the source of the attack.  The celestial glowed in the sky, its radiance muted somewhat by the two wraiths enfolding it.  The nightshades were more difficult to spot, blending with the night shadows, sucking up the faint radiance that made its way from the ring of torches on the wall around the village. Dannel was the only one who caught sight of the nightwing gliding silently down toward the celestial.  Drawing an arrow, infusing it with the power of his song, he launched it at the creature.  The shaft intersected perfectly with its broad form, but the undead monster did not react, continuing its dive toward the archon. “What are they?” Mole asked, trying unsuccessfully to make out what the elf had shot. “Empower me with flight!” Arun urged Cal, drawing upon the power of Moradin to infuse him with divine favor.  The gnome complied, using his wand upon the paladin.  As Arun lifted into the air, Mole turned from loading her little crossbow.  “Me next!” she cried.  “Sneak attacks won’t work in this situation,” Cal said.“I am next,” Beorna said, already filling herself with the divine power of Helm. “Fine, then Lok,” Cal said, drawing more power from the wand.  “Back to the pit from whence you came!” Umbar shouted, blasting one of the wraiths harrying the archon with a beam of searing light.  The creature let out a foul wail as the beam carved a swath through its dark substance, but it did not pause in its assault upon the celestial.  Abael drew upon another mass cure, fortifying itself and weakening the undead, but the celestial was clearly suffering from the draining touch of the wraiths.  She turned as the nightwing descended toward her, and lifted her sword again in challenge. But the wing did not close to melee, instead blasting the celestial with a cone of cold as it passed.  It obviously bore no concern for the wraiths; one of them avoided the attack, the blast passing harmlessly through its body, but the second was caught in the white nimbus, an outline of frost forming briefly over its substance before the wraith perished.  The blast should have finished off the archon, but she’d taken the precaution of warding herself against both cold and fire earlier, and the cone failed to penetrate that defense.  Despite that, however, it was clear that she was still nastily exposed to the attacks from the nightshades, as well as the remaining wraith that still hovered eagerly behind her. “Abael!  Fall back upon the tower!” Umbar yelled.  The archon lifted her head, acknowledging the dwarf cleric’s command.  But before she could act, the nightwalker hit her with a targeted greater dispel that ripped away her defenses like the layers of an onion.  Even her innate aura was disrupted by the spell.  Given a moment, Abael could have restored that protection with a thought, but she never got that moment as the walker followed its attack with a final quickened blight that tore mercilessly into the weakened celestial.  Abael cried out, and stiffened.  The dread wraith greedily latched onto her as she fell, and followed her down, the life bleeding out of her until she slammed into the hard earth with a flat thump. Chapter 529The companions could only watch as their ally was dispatched by the invading undead.  As of yet, their counterattacks had been of little avail.  As the nightwing had flown past the archon, vanishing back into the night, Dannel had switched targets to the nightwalker.  The moderate range—the thing stood in the midst of the village, a good two hundred feet distant—was of little impediment as he peppered its body with a barrage of electrically-charged missiles.  The darkness hindered his vision, but despite that difficulty he could tell that the shots appeared to have little effect, even with the full potency of his song infused in each arrow. “I don’t think I’m having any effect!” he warned, as he continued to fire. “Join the club!” Hodge said, winding his heavy crossbow for a second shot.  Mole had experienced a similar result with one of her shock bolts, and was leaning precariously out through one of the crenels in the battlement, as if considering leaping down to the ground to get more directly involved in events. Cal had finished enchanting Beorna, who hefted her adamantine sword—transforming it into a holy sword—and leapt up into the air after Arun.  Lok waited patiently for his turn, not even bothering to recover his longbow from his bag of holding. “They are nightshades,” Cal said.  “They are extraplanar beings, not of this world…”  “Save the lecture, ye daft gnome!” Hodge urged.  “How do we kill ‘em?”Cal’s mind darted back over the memory of dozens of books and scrolls, tales and legends, even tiny scraps of knowledge gleaned from old songs and bits of nearly forgotten lore.  A scrap of doggerel clung to that sweep, a verse he’d heard chanted once in a tavern in Waterdeep…Shades of darkness, walker in the night,Shy from silver, or the mornin’s light…“Silver weapons!” Cal exclaimed. “Where in the hells are we s’ppsed to get silver weapons?” Hodge shouted, jamming his finger painfully as he tried to snap a bolt into place.  “Damn and blast!”  But Dannel immediately slid off his pack, and dug into it for something.Umbar had turned away from them, and had fallen to one knee, his forehead pressed against the hilt of his hammer, obviously seeking some form of divine intervention. Arun felt the divine potency of his patron course through his veins as he ascended into the air over Ember Vale, the night air blowing cold through the slit in his helmet as he flew.  His target was the nightwalker, its outline a dark shadow against the night to his darkvision as he drew closer.  The creature looked up and fixed him with its horrible gaze, and Arun shuddered as a wave of malevolence swept over him.  Whatever grim power was in that stare, he was able to fight it off, and he brandished his holy hammer like a talisman as he dove toward it.  “Arun, look out!” Beorna’s cry alerted him just an instant before the wraith fell upon him.  He jerked to the side, but as the two passed its cold claw passed through his hip, sending a stabbing knife of cold through his lower body.  He tried to swipe it with his hammer, but the holy weapon merely passed harmlessly through its incorporeal body.  The wraith spun in mid air and turned to meet him again, but before the two opponents could close for another exchange Arun felt another magical attack hit him.  His own powers held against the nightwalker’s power, but the spell from Cal’s wand was much less potent, and even as he realized what had happened the fly spell dissolved before the walker’s greater dispel, and he went plummeting toward the ground fifty feet below. “Arun!” Mole yelled from atop the tower, unable to intervene to help the dwarf.  “He’s tough!” Hodge said, cursing as he fired another bolt uselessly toward the nightwalker.  “A little tumble like that ain’ gonna hurt ‘im!”  Still, it looked painful as Arun glanced off of a roof, rolled, and toppled down a final fifteen feet to slam hard into a lean-to shed, which crumpled under the impact. What was worse, however, was that the nightwalker was already heading in that direction. Lok lifted off of the tower roof, the latest beneficiary of Cal’s wand of fly.  Before he could join battle, however, a great rumbling shook the tower, the heavy stones vibrating under their feet.  “What now?” Hodge exclaimed. “Umm… guys…” Mole said.  From her uncertain perch deep within the crenel, leaning out over the stone edge of the battlement, she could see the ground below, where the packed earthen surface of the road in front of the tower had begun to rise into a low mound. Hodge looked down in time to see the ground erupt in a fountain of earth as the mound exploded outward, and a massive worm rose up into the air, its body easily seven feet across, formed of segments of utter blackness.  It rose higher, fifteen feet, twenty, twenty five, and as the horrified companions stared down at the bulbous head its massive maw opened wide, and it disgorged a spew of black vileness that resolved into a dozen discrete forms… undead shadows, which immediately flew up eagerly toward the living beings atop the tower.  Author’s note: just for the hell of it, I house-ruled that a greater dispel from a 21st level caster could completely wipe out a fly spell with a 5th level caster (i.e. from Cal’s wand), rather than lead to the soft-fall described in the 3.5e SRD.Chapter 530“Uh oh,” Mole said, as she looked down into the gaping blackness that was the nightcrawler’s huge maw.  A stench like a thousand open graves swam over her, and she fell back, gagging.  The movement caused her to look up, briefly, so she saw it coming. “Lok, look out!” The genasi had lifted himself a few paces into the air and shot out over the battlement, his axe ready to strike, his attention upon the nightcrawler.  But Mole’s warning brought his focus up in time to see the nightwing sweeping down out of the sky, directly toward him.  The genasi struck at the same instant that the wing hit.  From the nearly silent way they moved, and the fact that they were accompanied by wraiths and shadows, Lok had expected the thing to be nearly insubstantial, an echo of a living creature without much mass.  But as the wing slammed into him, driving him back with the force of a battering ram, he realized his mistake.  Gods, it has to weigh a few thousand pounds, he had time to think, as he was catapulted backward through the air.  His axe glanced off its hide, which was like leather and steel and rubber combined into a nearly indestructible combination.  For a full second the two were linked, then he tore free and fell back, the wing continuing forward as it spread its wings and began gliding around for another attack.  Aware that its damage resistance would make hurting it extremely difficult, Lok deliberately shucked his shield, letting it drop to the ground below, and he took up his axe in both hands. Umbar finished his prayer and stood as a skein of light motes gathered before him atop the tower, forming and solidifying until a celestial griffon, its hide a brilliant gold, stood awaiting his command.  The cleric instantly leapt atop its back, urging it to flight.  The agile summons responded, easily clearing the battlement despite the dwarf’s considerable weight, spreading its wings to gather the air as its rider shouted a battle cry to Moradin. But before Umbar could direct his mount to assail the nightcrawler, he was faced with the small horde of shadows, which eagerly rose to meet him.  Several latched onto the griffon, draining its strength, and threatening to bring it down.  A pair of the undead monsters came at the cleric himself, their insubstantial claws piercing his armor and drawing strength from his body.  “Be GONE!” he cried.  Yellow light erupted from his hammer, from the etched sigils of his faith graved on either side of the heavy iron head.  The shadows shrieked, and the nearest half-dozen evaporated as the purifying rays tore through their vaprous forms.  The cleric urged his mount toward the rearing form of the nightcrawler, but the griffon’s diminished strength was no longer up to the task, and he had to direct his efforts to just staying upon its back as it tried to make a controlled landing a short distance away. Beorna had seen the nightcrawler’s dramatic appearance, but her attention was focused more on Arun’s fate.  As soon as he’d fallen, she’d dove after him, but was drawn up short as the last dread wraith rose up from the corpse of its celestial victim to meet her.  Up close, it seemed even bigger than it has first appeared, and it looked as though it would simply enfold her, to suck her life from her body in a cold embrace.  The templar lifted her sword, but at the last moment called upon a blast of searing light that tore through the center of the wraith, opening a blazing hole in its body that quickly spread, until the undead monstrosity dissolved into harmless wisps of night.  But the wraith had managed to delay her, for a critical moment. Arun pulled himself awkwardly to his feet, shattered pieces of wood from the ruined shed continuing to fall around him.  His head spun and he tasted blood, but that didn’t stop him from tearing himself free, staggering forward, his heavy hammer still firmly held in his right hand. He looked up, right into the face of the nightwalker. “Are ye goin’ to do somethin’, elf?” Hodge all but shrieked, as the nightcrawler seemed to continue to grow larger and larger as more of it tunneled out from under the ground.  Already almost sixty feet of its body had formed a coil in the middle of the street, and its head twisted upward, until its head—and that huge opening that served as its mouth—was only a short distance below the level of the tower’s battlement. “I’m working on it,” Dannel said, as he poured the contents of a small vial over a thick bundle of arrows.  The liquid glistened as it coated the arrowheads, shining slightly even in the darkness. “Well, ye better do it quick!” the dwarf said, ducking out from cover long enough to fire another bolt into the nightcrawler.  His attack, like those before, appeared to have no effect. As soon as he’d poured out the last drop of the silversheen, Dannel tossed the vial aside and rose, one arrow almost leaping to his string as he spread the others out on the merlon in front of him.  His first shot penetrated the undead worm’s body just below the maw, and this time he got a response.  He drew again and fired as the worm surged up, extending until its head was a good thirty five feet above the level of the ground below.  He knew something bad was coming, but he drew a third arrow, and even as a white storm of death exploded from deep within it, he released the shot toward its long body. The cone of cold swept up over the battlement, piercing the crenels between the thick stone merlons.  The fortifications provided some cover, although Dannel, already exposed, took the blast hard and staggered back, shivering.  Most of his arrows went careening away from the blast, although he managed to grasp onto a handful as he fell.  Hodge and Cal likewise huddled in cover, and of course Mole avoided the cone entirely. Dannel struggled to rise, but the crawler gave them no chance to counterattack.  Even as its head drew back, it unleashed another potent power, and laid a mass hold monster atop the tower.  Against its potent magic only the strongest of wills could offer resistance.  Cal’s mental discipline withstood it, but Mole, Dannel, and Hodge were all caught, paralyzed.</blockquote>

Verification